CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM (11)
By:
February 8, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
WOODY’S GUITAR
THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS. How do these words fall for you? What passions flower, what resistances well up? What image do they conjure? For me, it’s this photo of Guthrie posing with proto-punk insouciance, his eyes frank and clear, a cigarette butt fixed in his pout. On the guitar he’s holding, the words are scrawled in black paint around the upper edge of the top, crawling around both bouts, ungainly and alive.
Many versions of “this machine kills fascists” crop up in Guthrie imagery, on many guitars, written across labels or scrawled in pen or paint on the top, usually on the upper bout. It seems that no guitar so marked exists today, however (if you know of one, let me know). It’s contended that Guthrie owned — and marked up — many instruments; some sources put the number in the hundreds. But only a few Guthrie-owned guitars are extant, and I know of only one, a 1936 Martin OOO-18 in Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture, that carries the famous inscription. On this instrument, the words are scratched into the wood on the back, very small, like a secret carried in a seed or the scroll in a mezuzah.
The OOO-18 Auditorium model was listed in the 1935 catalog of C. F. Martin & Co. at a price of $55.00; the most expensive model, an F-9 archtop “refined in every detail,” cost $245. Fifty-five bucks in 1935 would be about $1300 today, more or less; an equivalent Martin guitar now costs around three grand. Guthrie probably bought the ’36 Martin used, or maybe it was given to him, or borrowed and not returned. Of course, any such guitar appearing at auction today would sell for tens of thousands of dollars, maybe more.
Guthrie cribbed his inscription from the lathes of World War II factory workers. The words escaped their wartime context, however, to mingle with Guthrie’s legend. Today, the Guthrie Center in Tulsa sells patches and stickers; the words crop up on laptops and Nintendo controllers and tattooed on human bodies. I want to say that, more than any overt political theorist or text, Guthrie’s guitars contributed to the rise of “fascist” as a common, perhaps too-easy term for enemies of human dignity.
They’re hard words, though. We might best approach the inscription as a kind of koan, each word alive with challenge. “THIS” — we’re in a direct encounter, nothing abstract; “MACHINE” — a guitar is a contraption, no magic involved; “FASCISTS” — who are these fascists, now, exposed to the fury of this soundhole?; and the crux, “KILLS” — how does music kill, and what dies in the encounter?
CAHUN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON | Lynn Peril on ZAZOUS | Judith Zissman on DIE GEDANKEN SIND FREI | Annie Nocenti on MEDIUM COOL | Mike Watt on FASCIST | William Nericcio on LALO ALCARAZ | Josh Glenn on THE LADY VANISHES | Carlo Rotella on INQUIETUD | Heather Quinlan on CASABLANCA | Adam McGovern on HEART OF GLASS (MAD JENNY) | Matthew Battles on WOODY’S GUITAR | Carl Wilson on PALACES OF GOLD | Ramona Lyons on UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED | Lucy Sante on CAMOUFLAGE | Adelina Vaca on THE LIVES OF OTHERS | Tom Nealon on THE BARON IN THE TREES | Nikhil Singh on PARIS PEASANT | Mandy Keifetz on THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED | Gordon Dahlquist on THE CONFORMIST | Michael Grasso on PYNCHONIA | Gabriela Pedranti on THE ETERNAUT | Heather Kapplow on ANTI-FASCIST PASTA | Marc Weidenbaum on (WHAT’S SO FUNNY ’BOUT) PEACE, LOVE, AND UNDERSTANDING | Peggy Nelson on PUPPETS | Sonia Marques on CARNATIONS AGITPROP.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!